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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25230418">Long is the way</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/towards_morning/pseuds/towards_morning'>towards_morning</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Primacy (yelling all the way down) [5]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers: Prime</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Continuity mixture, Gen, Maccadam referenced, Rung is here and old and melancholy and we love him, That AU where Ratchet is Prime and mad about it!</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 02:47:36</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,909</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25230418</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/towards_morning/pseuds/towards_morning</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Rung has questions for the newly appointed Prime, but he's not quite ready to be honest about what those are yet.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Ratchet &amp; Rung (Transformers)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Primacy (yelling all the way down) [5]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1424047</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>62</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Long is the way</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>this is still not the thing i am supposed to be writing for primacy but there we go</p><p>NGL, the primary reason I spent so long working through this is I have ideas as to future primacy Rung stuff that needs at least a little context? And also I generally wanted to do a fun, no stakes rung-ratchet fic? And somehow they both merged into... the same thing??? Oops.</p><p>the title is from paradise lost bc I'm just that silly. enjoy.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Rung was, and had always been, about the only person who thought of Ratchet as someone you could “drop in on at the office”. Everyone else knew not to on pain of, if not death, at least the shrivelling embarrassment of being chewed out for the interruption. The point was: only Rung would dare interrupt Ratchet once he got going.</p><p>Most everyone had been trained out of objection, but not Rung, who knocked gently before opening the door.</p><p>“What,” Ratchet said, refusing to look up. True, he hadn’t read a word of the datapad in front of him this last hour. When the night cycle had started and the lights had dimmed, he had only defocused his optics and let the cold blue glow blur. But damned if he would look up.</p><p>“Hello, Ratchet,” Rung said, and Ratchet listened to the small mech close the door behind him carefully. Always considerate. In the small room, the click seemed too loud, too much. Ratchet suppressed a wince.</p><p>The dead silence that followed was something Ratchet clung to. Ever since- well, ever since, he had been fighting off intermittent interjections, hard to ignore. Here, though, even as Rung intruded, Ratchet kept his eyes down and his head in one hand, and the quiet remained. As long as Ratchet had known him, Rung had always had that knack. Where he went, silence followed, and it had always been a comfort. To Ratchet if not always to Rung.</p><p>Unfortunately Rung didn’t seem to understand that because he tried again. “How have you been?”</p><p>The sheer inanity almost lifted his head. Almost.</p><p>“Like slag,” he said.</p><p>“Well then,” Rung said, brisk. He smiled at Ratchet, like someone used to difficulty. Ratchet had glanced up at some point, catching his gaze, before resolutely looking back down. Just instinct. Just that.</p><p>Even so- even so, Ratchet had always admired Rung for how he took such things in his stride. Rung smiled, and Ratchet thought pit damn it. “In that case, shall we take a walk? I know you haven't been on break yet."</p><p>“Sure,” Ratchet said, even as he shook his head. “Sure, Rung.”</p><p> </p><p>*******************</p><p>Ratchet was not in the mood for a walk. It was more or less inevitable that they would end up at a bar instead. Rung put up only the mildest objection before following him to Maccadam’s, not either mech’s usual choice but close enough, geographically speaking, to avoid conversation on the way there.</p><p>Ratchet settled them both into a booth and was about to go make his excuses to order drinks and decide what the pit he was going to fob Rung off with when Maccadam himself, broad and jovial, popped up. Ratchet didn’t startle easily but dear Primus, where had he come from? Maccadam owned the place and Ratchet was sure he’d met him before and even so, both of them startled at the sight of him.</p><p>“Here you are,” Maccadam said, pleasant even as Ratchet thought <i>since when does he serve personally?</i> “On the house.”</p><p>A full bottle was deposited between him and Rung, with two glasses, a wink just barely fitting in between. They hadn’t ordered. Maccadam whisked himself off before Ratchet could object. Or ask questions of any kind, the afthole. He’d only been here once before… well. Before. Two times since then and nothing but obnoxious smiles and hints Ratchet had no interest in picking up. But at least the drinks were good. Unfortunately.</p><p>When Ratchet poured a measure for lack of anything else to do in the silence and drank it, he tried to keep himself unimpressed. Rung, for his part, only smiled and sipped. It was good, both the booze and the feeling of quiet camaraderie. <i>Really</i> good. Frag him, no excuse left to leave this little haven where Rung watched him, then, damn it all to the pit.</p><p>Rung peered at the half full glass in front of him before he took another sip. Small. Not interested in the drink, really. “Thank you for coming out,” he said, bland as anything, “I don’t often have the chance to do so.”</p><p>Ratchet bit his tongue and swallowed the remainder of his own drink in one. He thought- why feel guilty, <i>he</i> started this. Which was true, but even so Ratchet shifted in his seat. Not quite willing to leave it at that. It had been a long few weeks, and in that time he could count the times he had met anyone’s eye on one servo. Certainly Ratchet hadn’t been swamped with the kind of people who made small talk, or who walked over to out of the way bars. Mostly a great many important people had been studiously ignoring his bad habit of walking off to bars on his own after a day of intermittent shouting. By contrast, the silence was now both notable and palpable. Tense.</p><p>“Go on,” Ratchet said after a moment, forcing himself to meet Rung’s eyes.</p><p>When Rung paused, Ratchet couldn’t help but groan in frustration. Less out of desire; more out of hope. He was, he could admit to himself, tired of silent reproach. Actual vocalisation would be a relief at this point.</p><p>“Go on,” he said again, insistent.</p><p>“How are you?” Rung asked, careful. Ratchet snorted. He knew why Rung was asking; he was kind, kind enough to put aside what he meant in favour of compassion.</p><p>“Wrong question,” he said, “Try again.”</p><p>“I’m not trying to-” Rung started.</p><p>“Try again,” Ratchet insisted. Rung looked away, then back again.</p><p>“You’re not okay,” Rung said, firmer than he had been before. Not a question. Ratchet looked up and held Rung’s gaze. One klik, two.</p><p>“I’m fine,” Ratchet said. Before he could down his second drink, Rung caught his hand.</p><p>“Ratchet,” Rung said, his smile now fixed in place, too knowing to be borne. Ratchet had never pitied Rung like so many did, he had only thought the mech deserved better than he had ever gotten; maybe the engex was starting to hit him, but watching, Ratchet understood why that was. Rung was looking at him with steel. A kind steel, but still it was hard.</p><p>“Well, all things considered,” Ratchet said, pulling away, “-all things considered, I’m here, aren’t I?”</p><p>Rung let go of his hand after a few moments, face inscrutable. Ratchet drank again, wishing he knew how to match that kind of calm, whether it was faked or not. He had tried it, but as of late it had been so much harder to keep a poker face. Too many voices in his head. None of them impressive. All of them demanding.</p><p>Rung, meanwhile, was now fiddling with his drink, moving it this way and that, not bringing it to his mouth. “You are here,” he acknowledged, still looking down. He ran a digit around the edge of his cube, the resulting sound quiet and ringing like bells, back and forth.</p><p>“If I wanted a therapist,” Ratchet said after a moment, “I’d have asked for one.”</p><p>Rung took his finger off the glass, and the resulting silence rang in its own way while Ratchet watched him. Those glasses never hid as much as he privately thought Rung might have liked. “I know,” Rung said, “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to pry.”</p><p>“You never mean to,” Ratchet said. Ratchet liked Rung. He had taught a class back when he was in the Medic’s academy, in the years after the functionists had begun to lessen their grip. Rung had always had time for anyone and everyone, a tendency that had never decreased once his former students became his peers. After a time, Ratchet had wondered just how much time he even had, to keep giving it like that. To come by his office only to make sure he spoke to someone who didn’t want answers Ratchet had no idea how to give, to fix a mess that reached so far back the roots were impossible to find.</p><p>Rung seemed to not know what to say. The silence stretched.</p><p>“Look,” Ratchet said, “I’m gonna be fine, eventually. It fragging sucks, and I hate it, and I have no idea what the pit I’m doing, but I’ve gotten this far.” Ratchet poured another measure from the bottle. Rung opened his mouth to respond, but Ratchet got there first, continuing, “Just the same as you.”</p><p>That left Rung open mouthed, and Ratchet took his shot in the pause before continuing. “Sure, it’s not the same, but I figure you know how slagged it is to spend every day answering to some idiot with ideas about a higher calling, right?”</p><p>“That’s not-” Rung started, before visibly stopping himself. Ratchet made sure not to feel too pleased about turning the tables. Rung hadn’t done anything but check in on a struggling ex-student, now colleague. No need to be petty.</p><p>And anyway. Ratchet might be dealing with a parasite in his chest and voices ringing through his processor, but he wasn’t so angry and far gone just yet to be cruel about all those times Rung had vanished into thin air in the days of functionism. He had never come back fully himself, or quite so outspoken. Not for a while after.</p><p>Rung took a second sip of his engex, no longer looking at Ratchet.</p><p>“Ask what you really wanted to ask,” Ratchet said, not without gentling his voice. Rung wasn’t looking for easy prey; he didn’t need to go on the defensive. “Go on.”</p><p>In the pause, Rung still didn’t look at him. A finger back on the rim of his still nearly full glass, the sound just audible above the bar’s din, ringing out. Eventually he said, quietly, “Does it make any more sense now?”</p><p>“No,” Ratchet said immediately. No need to think about it. Just short of a dozen dead Primes in his head and spark and all he had was a headache; exactly what he had expected, really. More real than he’d assumed before, but not at all as impressive as anyone wanted them to be.</p><p>Rung nodded, still looking down, still playing with his glass. “I suppose I hoped it would,” he said. The hand not tracing back and forth came up to adjust his glasses. “It’s been a long time since I could trust my memories, you know. Information creep set in too long ago to even say when. The thought of an unbroken line…” Rung finally looked up, catching his optics, and smiled. “I suppose it’s tempting.”</p><p>“It’s slag,” Ratchet said, and for the first time since the damn thing became his problem, he wished he had a better answer. But Rung only smiled a little wider.</p><p>“I suppose it is,” he said, “And I’m sorry. Let’s start again, shall we?” Rung pushed his nearly full drink across the table. “How are you, Ratchet? Really.”</p><p>Ratchet met his optics and nodded. “I’ve been worse, all things considered. You?”</p><p>“I’m curious,” Rung said, and he took his glasses off, not looking down as he cleaned them. “If that’s alright?”</p><p>“Better you than the press,” Ratchet said. When Rung laughed, he realised he meant it. There was more to reassuring the faithful than posturing, he supposed; sometimes it meant making someone smile. Better than what the council had him doing. “Ask away.”</p><p>"Well then," Rung said, "Tell me, exactly: what do you remember?"</p><p>For the first time since all this started, Ratchet found he wanted to say. So he did.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Find me screaming abt robots on twitter at <a href="https://twitter.com/auto_thots">auto_thots!</a></p></blockquote></div></div>
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